Month: August 2012

Three sentence movie reviews: Moonrise Kingdom

This was one of those perfect films where everything is amazing:  acting, story, sets, cinematography all were incredible.  You could probably pause at any point in this film and have a perfectly composed picture, that’s how beautiful it was.  This is the kind of movie that makes going to the movies fabulous.

Essay: Tired.

My relationship with sleep is troubled.  I always want more, but there are periods in my life where the insomnia returns and even though I am very tired and would like nothing more than to be asleep, my body is awake in the middle of the
night for an hour or two.  Of late, there have been a string of these nights which is “fun” not just for me, but the people around me.

When I am tired, I feel it in my eyes the most.  There’s tension in them that expands across my nose.  It is a tight feeling—uncomfortable.  Also, my brain is
lethargic and my thoughts turn often to sleep.  My hunger signals are harder to interpret.  I feel hungry all the time, though experience tells me I am not really and eating constantly will not help the problem.
I mostly associate these physical sensations with the misery that is insomnia.  However, last night I was thinking about times I feel overtired, but with a sense of elation.  It happens. Here are some examples.
I am in college, and writing my first long paper for anything and I am a bit out of my element.  The paper is for Western Civ. and must be eight to ten pages.  I have researched my topic, found four sources—one more than required!—in the college’s tiny library.  I have made quote cards to avoid plagiarism and have a bibliography done already.  The problem is that the paper is due tomorrow and I have not yet written it.  I have made some attempts, but they have trailed off into a few tepid paragraphs.  It is nine pm, my other work is finished and the clock is ticking.
I write my first draft in longhand on paper I have grabbed from the recycling bin and I type it into my word processor as I edit.  As the hours pass, I revise and polish, catching mistakes here and there, adding details and clarifying points.  At two in the morning I set my word processor to print while I walk down to the basement of the dorm for a soda to keep me awake awhile longer.  I take the printed copies and begin the arduous task of reading each sentence individually from the last to the first, to catch my many spelling and grammar errors.*
At four o’clock I have finished, printed my final copy and stapled it with the stapler my mother sent me to college with.  I collapse into bed for three hours of sleep and arise with that exhausted feeling.  Still, I am pretty pumped. I wrote the paper, it exceeded the proscribed eight to ten page minimum by a few pages and I am pleased with my work.  Even as a college student, a good night’s sleep was important to me and I swore I would never do that again, a vow I mostly kept for my remaining years of college.  The paper got an A and went on to win a writing prize, forever associating that exhausted feeling with a worthy payoff.
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I like a boy. This situation could be any number of examples as I like boys a lot and the process of liking one was a familiar one from elementary school. However, beginning in high school, they started to like me back, which changed the game entirely and was much more rewarding.  So I like a boy.  We’ve been hanging out more and I am pretty sure he likes me, but I do not want jinx anything by admitting it aloud.  I can read the signs, which range from the
hand casually resting on my shoulder or arm to the out-of-nowhere, “what’s up
with you” phone call, to the group gatherings that are suddenly being organized
by mutual friends that always include the two of us.
It is late and I have to get home. I have a curfew, or work early in the morning or just need to end the evening.  The two of us have circled closer together: maybe the group gathering has dissipated leaving only us; maybe we have gone for a walk and our bodies bump into each other more regularly; maybe we are talking intently on a couch and in our excited conversation have inched closer together.  There is a tension in the air, and euphoria. Everything has grown brighter as the potential for something grows before us.
We part. Maybe with something to seal the deal like a kiss, maybe with firm plans for the next day, maybe with a hug that lasts longer than one between friends usually does.  But I come home, giddy that the signs that have been pointing in a direction have not been false.  Something is happening.
Home, I go through my nightly ritual, maybe running through the whole thing if it is not too late, maybe just crawling into my pajamas and flopping into bed if it is.  But I don’t fall asleep.  I am high on the possibilities, giddy with like and thrilled that my feelings are reciprocated.  Sleep comes eventually and I wake in the morning exhausted and amped and full of possibility.
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I am a junior in high school.  Junior year is the sweet spot when you have the
high school thing down and do not have the many pressures of senior year
hanging over you, or at least it was for me.  I have been hanging out with a girl who is not yet a friend.  Our boyfriends—who have broken up with both of
us over the summer—are friends and our social circles overlap a bit, but we
have not quite advanced to the “official friend” stage.  It is a Saturday night in early September, a few hours before my curfew and we are chatting.
I can’t remember why it was just the two of us, other people might have had earlier curfews or wandered off to their own potential romance or just gone
home to bed.
It is one of those conversations where you are meant to be going, but the conversation is so delightful that it kept going, despite the fact we were standing out on the sidewalk in the dark.  We talked into the warm September night, first standing, then leaning against the car, finally giving into the inevitable and sitting on the sidewalk, our feet in sandals resting in the gutter, our arms crossed against the promise of autumn chill.
Sitting there, I can remember thinking, “I really want us to be friends.”  New friendships have always been trickier for me than new romance.  In a romance, when push comes to shove, I can always just kiss the boy and find out if things are going to go in the direction I think signs are heading.  There is no similar marker for a friend.
Our conversation did have to end eventually, but I really did not want it to.  Curfew called, though, and we reluctantly parted.  At home, I was tired as only teenagers can be—that potent cocktail of hormones and growth and figuring out who I really am combined with an urge to stay up late and not the best eating habits with a bit of schoolwork and part-time jobs thrown in is incredibly exhausting.  But through my exhaustion, I felt the happy connection to a new friend that bolstered me the next day.
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So it is not always a bad feeling, this tired feeling.  Sometimes there is energy behind it, from accomplishment, new love or new friends.  Maybe when I am tired just because of boring old middle-of-the-night insomnia I can tap into some of that good energy and boost my day.
 *Something, it should be noted, I do not do for these essays.

Three sentence movie reviews: The Eagle

Yet another incredibly good movie I would have never heard of if not on a Channing Tatum quest.  This is a great action/adventure story set in a time period not currently in vogue (pre-Christian Roman times) with a lot of interesting period details and good acting.  Unlike most conquest movies, it also comes free of “white guilt” as the conquering and the conquered both fall into today’s “Caucasian” category.

poster from: 

http://www.impawards.com/2011/eagle_ver2.html

Three sentence movie reviews: The Vow

This looked dumb and I was so embarrassed to rent this movie I got it from the anonymous Redbox, instead of supporting my local video store.  However, it turned out to be a fabulous movie, interesting and compelling.  Both leads were quite good at getting across the difficulty of recovery from head injury, and the movie never sank to a schmaltzy level.

poster from: 

http://www.impawards.com/2012/vow.html

Books read in July 2012

Hah! Only 7 books read this month despite being on vacation for a week.  Could some sort of balance be returning to my reading schedule?  Let’s hope so.  Maybe next month I will only read five books.

Read
Bossypants. 
Tina Fey 
I’ve been staring at this book in the Lucky Day section at my library for many months and I just last week noticed that the hands on the cover are man hands and not hers at all.  I would make a horrible FBI agent as noticing is not my thing.  


This is a very funny book, which I read at the same time I read Sleepwalk with Me by Mike Bribigla and while reading both books my laughter echoed through the house often, causing much commentary by Matt. I spared him the reading aloud of multiple pages, but he would have been the better for it.


The thing I liked about this memoir was that it was full of great stories, but Tina Fey still keeps her secrets.  Her reasons why she does not talk about the attack that gave her the scar on her face was one of the most brilliantly reasoned passages I have read in a memoir and I admired how we continually heard about her ongoing state of virginity, but she never tells us the details of when she crossed that milestone.  Tina Fey is a classy lady and proof that feminists and funny are not exclusive.


Sleepwalk with Me
Mike Bribigla
This was sitting on the shelf of the library right next to Bossypants and I grabbed them both.  Both were laugh-out-loud funny.  Some of this book were things expanded from bits I heard of Bribiglia’s act, some were stories new to me.  I loved reading his response to review published in student publications and his tour of college campuses of the northwest.  Matt got to hear that one read aloud.


Plain Kate
Erin Bow
This falls into the “YA strong female protagonist” genre that is publishing like mad right now.  The story was compelling, but perhaps a little too dark for me.


The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Douglas Adams
Read aloud.
The saga of Ford Prefect and Arthur continues as they bring along Trillian and Zaphod Beeblebrox.  High-jinx ensue, pithy observations are made and funny things happen.

Wonder
R.J. Palacio
Thanks to Sara, I read one of the best books of the year.  This is the story of a deformed child entering a middle school after being home schooled through elementary school.  It’s the awkward middle school transition we all got to experience, but times one-thousand.  The writing is wry and compelling and the characters were very multidimensional.  I am hoping this will win some prizes.

Giovanni’s Room
James Baldwin
Read for Book Group
Eh.  The prose was dry, the forbidding sense of doom became annoying really quickly and I didn’t really like any of the characters.  That  said, it was an interesting glimpse into homosexuality in Paris in the 1950s.  And I was the only one at book group who didn’t like it.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle
Haruki Murakami
So I’m still not sure about Murakami.  As with 1Q84, I enjoyed reading the book, it sort of put me in an altered state.  But when I finished I was again wondering if that was all there was.  I’ll read another of Murakami and maybe that will help me decide if I like him or not.  Or maybe I’ll read all of his books and still have the same feeling.

Started and did not finish.
The Horse and His Boy
C.S. Lewis
Oh god, this series is boring.  Stay tuned to see if I make it through all the books.